The last three years we have been involved in the research “Living and learning with new literacies in and outside school: contributions for reducing school drop-out, exclusion and abandonment among youth” (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness,  EDU2011-24122). Through this research, we aim to contribute to increasing understanding of how young people learn and use differen new literacies in and outside secondary schools (Lanskhear y Knobel, 2003; 2006; Kress 2008) by developing a series of  ethnographical studies carried out in five Catalan secondary schools. New literacies means new ways of using socially constructed forms of communication and representation (Kellner, 2001). Involving in these process thirtyfour students allowed us to explore links and tensions between what the school believes that learning is and how young people conceive and experience their learning.

The initial hypothesis of this project is that there is a disconnection between what the secondary school considers as learning (mainly listening, doing exercises and reporting in the exam) and how young people learn outside the school in communities of exchange using different literacies. To explore this hypothesis and provide alternatives, we considered studying how young people learn inside and outside school. And we decided to do this with them. In this way, a fundamental stage of the project was to undertake research in five secondary schools in Catalonia. We highlighted the characteristic that the researchers were five groups of students, accompanied by and in collaboration with the research team as well as at least one teacher from each participating school (Domingo, Sánchez & Sancho, 2014).

Our starting assumption is that learning goes beyond cognitive and pedagogical approaches. Learning is not only what occurs in this space/time between an input (teaching) and an output (assessment) process. Learning is a complex matter connected with life and biographical experiences, dialogical conversations, inquiry process, the way the (new) unconscious (Mlondinow, 2012) operates, and so on (Stoll, Fink & Earl, 2001).

This paper presents one of the last actions undertaken in that research. We wanted to transfer findings about how young people learn out-of-school to improved different ways to understand teaching, learning and assessment at schools. In order to assume this challenge we had to face some tensions and unknown issues. Is it possible to develop an inclusive school approach, in which every student finds their place to develop his/her learning style? And is it even possible to catch how they are connecting in and outside learning experiences? Finally, to answer these questions, is ethnography the methodological position that allows us to explore and understand young people’s views and voices?

In other words, what we want to explore in this paper is what we, as researchers and university scholars,  and young people, as ‘learners’ and researchers,  have learnt  through the ethnographic process about learning and what can be transferred to other learning and social contexts.

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